Gazette-Mail editorial: WVU's Benson says recruiting is key to rebuild

"The interesting thing about West Virginia is that it has the highest high school graduation rate of any state in the country," Benson said in an interview last week with Gazette-Mail editors. "But then it slides down to around 44th for the college-going population in the country." 

Benson said he would be "the last person to argue a four-year degree is for everyone," but that some form of continuing education after high school, whether it be a trade school, an associate's degree or something similar, is vital to just about anyone who wants to make a decent living after high school. WVU, he said, offers points of entry for just about any of those pursuits, something he intends to make clear across the state as he settles into his new role atop West Virginia's flagship university.  

"You have to find what’s right for you and find the right campus for you," Benson said. "We are going to tell all the high school students we can to find what is right for them." 

Higher-educated populations don't just earn more money. They also experience a higher quality of life (an area where West Virginia's rankings are typically dreadful) and Benson noted an educated population is more civically engaged and community minded.  

Benson took over in July for two-time WVU President E. Gordon Gee, who oversaw the university's "academic transformation," in 2023, which entailed shedding multiple programs (including shutting down the entire foreign language department) and laying off 143 faculty members. Gee, who retired over the summer and is now a professor emeritus with WVU's law school, was adamant at the time that the university hadn't mishandled money, but WVU was facing a $45 million budget deficit and had taken on a lot of debt for various projects. The school also was experiencing a long trend of declining enrollment despite Gee initially predicting a boom in student numbers when he took the helm in Morgantown for a second time in 2014. 

Factor in a continual decline in state funding from a legislature controlled by a Republican supermajority, with some lawmakers seeming almost hostile toward the concept of higher education, and a presidential administration that has played around with freezing student financial aid and grants, and the challenge Benson faces in growing WVU seems that much greater. 

The answer, Benson said, is to aggressively recruit students, and not just in West Virginia. 

West Virginia is a small state, and the population, on average, is older. About 17,000 West Virginians graduated from high school last spring, Benson said. In comparison, neighboring Pennsylvania saw about 118,000 high school graduates. WVU can't grow unless it casts a wider net. 

One strategy for that, Benson said, might include offering metro rates -- something lower than out-of-state tuition -- for certain areas in border states. It's a strategy more universities are employing to grow enrollment and make inroads beyond their typical student pipeline regions. 

Another goal is to reach out to West Virginians who might have some college credit but never finished a degree program and reconnect them to higher education. 

This was something Benson said he pursued with some success when he was president at Coastal Carolina. He said that, at one point, there were about 450,000 South Carolina residents who had some college credits but had not crossed the finish line. 

"I get it, life happens," he said. "We want to provide opportunities to get people back in the system. That's something we're going to be really aggressive about."